Diving Grand Prix in Rostock, Germany - 07

On the 17th of June the Australian Diving Team was off to Deutschland. The team included: Sharleen, Melissa, Peter and me. Graeme Rose came along as the new High Performance manager, and Hui Tong. It was a massive journey to get to Rostock - flight to Singapore, then to Paris, another flight to Berlin and a three hour bus ride to Rostock! Rostock is up the top of Germany on the Baltic Sea, and was founded in the 11th century.

The competition was held at the Neptun pool, there was a good dryland area, and the pool was really nice too. The 3m springboards were nice and bouncy but really close together, which made me feel like I was diving on top of Sharleen in the synchro event. The platform was weird, there were wooden slats on top of the concrete, the surface on the platform was a bit slippery and scary.

My first event was Women's 3m springboard on the 23rd of June, there were 28 girls in the event and after the prelims I was in 11th place. In the semi finals I dove ok, my back 2.5 was short. All in all I finished 10th, which is ok, but not great. A few hours later Melissa and I teamed up for the Women's 10m Synchronised event, there were 10 teams in the event. We didn't dive the best, our synchro was a little off and my inward 3.5 was over. We finished a disappointing 4th place, we did get a cool chammy, a certificate and a long stemmed red rose for our efforts.
On the 24th of June Sharleen and I had the Women's 3m Synchro, again there were 10 teams in the event. We both dove very well to finish in 2nd place behind Guo Jingjing and Wu Mingxia. We received a certificate, rose and prize money, but no medal which was disappointing.

We got to go out and see a few things in Rostock. We went to Neuer Markt (L), Kröpeliner Straße (R) and we even went to an Aldi Supermarket. The buildings were beautiful and colourful and very old. I caught Wu Minxia and Zhou Luxin at the supermarket with a trolley full of lollies and chocolates!! I bought a few tops from a shop called H&M, and of course some chocolates. The bottom right photo is of the Warnow River, with some hot air balloons in the background.

On the 25th of June, we left Germany, via Paris and Singapore. Peter and I enjoyed a foot massage at Singapore airport, it was fantastic! We arrived back on Wednesday morning of the 27th.

It was a fun and quick trip. I was very happy with some of my diving, but I still need to work on consistency. Hopefully Melissa, Sharleen and me will hopefully be off to England, Mexico and China in September for the FINA World Diving Series.